Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui has tried his hand at quite a lot of variety — be it playing a tough inspector in Kahaani (2012), a menacing antagonist in Kick (2014), or even biopics such as Manto (2018) and Thackeray (2019). He hasn’t shied away from doing masala potboilers either, and he says he is not at all apprehensive about doing more of them.

“There’s nothing like I won’t do them. The thing is, when I was in National School of Drama (NSD), we would do plays of every kind — in Sanskrit, with Parsi songs, dialogue deliveries which were long and required us to shout, Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov and realistic ones, too. That’s an actor’s job — to do roles of every kind,” Siddiqui shares.

This is why he doesn’t like any actor to be labelled according to the platform or medium they perform on the most, for example, as a TV or film actor. He adds, “Acting toh acting hoti hai, chaahe ped pe chadh ke karo, street pe nukkad natak ya stage pe. A good actor will be good everywhere. Baat acting ki karo, categorise karna theek nahin hai. Har style ki film ya theatre karna chahiye. Yeh nahi ki particular ek hi cheez… that’s why I like acting. I get a chance to re-invent and discover with every film, what can be better than that?” 

In a career spanning over two decades, Siddiqui has done more than 30 films. And his journey in itself has been an inspiration, from blink-and-miss appearances to leading roles on the big screen. But have there been any films that he regretted doing afterwards? The 46-year-old actor confesses that he has indeed done some films only for the money he was being offered.

“Haan, maine paison ke liye films kari hain, aur aage bhi karunga. I do such films where I get a lot of money, so that I can do good cinema where I don’t get money, or which I can do for free. I won’t do [films] for free, but I did it for Manto, I didn’t take any [money]. But for that three-four months’ process, I have to either do a film for money before or after it for a balance. It’s only then you can do a Manto for free,” he admits.